


Closer (Commentary)

by ktula



Series: Somewhere in Canada...(the Terror kink AU commentary) [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Convention, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Author Commentary, Discussion of Explicit Sexual Content, Discussion of Platonic and Sexual Kink, Hard Kink Written Soft, M/M, See Original Work For Complete Tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 18:35:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30042999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktula/pseuds/ktula
Summary: Edward Little has been to kink conventions before. Canada is new, though. So is the devastatingly handsome guy working the booth across the hall.

The feeling Edward’s somehow gonna fuck the whole weekend up?

That, unfortunately, is terribly familiar.---The work below is full commentary onCloser, which is a Jopson/Little modern BDSM AU for The Terror, linked above.Complete tags for the fic itself are available on the fic, and havenotbeen replicated here. The commentary does discuss BDSM, power exchange, hard physical play, explicit sexual content, etc, and has consequently been rated E.
Series: Somewhere in Canada...(the Terror kink AU commentary) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2210115
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10
Collections: DVD Commentary Challenge





	1. Risk

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Closer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298) by [ktula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktula/pseuds/ktula). 



> This commentary was originally posted on Tumblr at the same time as the fic (ie, about a year prior to now). I'm shifting it to ao3 for archival purposes, and future commentary for additional installments in the series will be located on ao3 as well.

So, [chapter one of _Closer_](https://href.li/?https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/56231185), the first installment in _Somewhere in Canada (the Terror kink AU)…_ is now posted! And let me tell you what, I am hype because this is my very first longfic in the Terror fandom, and it’s centered around a subject very near and dear to my heart—BDSM. It’s a love letter to power exchange, the sheer joy of kink, conventions, and sex education.

Like other fic breakdowns I’ve done, this’ll be in three parts—technical notes (like POV and stylistic choices), story notes (like characterization and kink info), and then, instead of the editing section I usually include, I’m going to talk about specific lines at the end.

I blame Edward for the line notes, tbh. I love him, but he’s a himbo, and many things went unobserved in the course of this story.

(Okay, fine, it’s not entirely his fault. Some of it is that he’s just so steeped in kink that he doesn’t think twice about a bunch of the stuff going on.)

**Technical Considerations**

**Inspiration:** So this fic is a love letter to kink, and kink education, and conventions, which in my experience can be life-changing opportunities to meet people with similar interests, and also to be able to do some exploration of your own and figure out what makes you tick. I’m pretty sure there’s an AU version of me that makes their living off kink education and the convention circuit, but (un)fortunately, in this particular universe, I am a fic writer (and, occasionally, a paid one as well).

 _Closer_ is also a love letter to rough physical play. I remember sitting in my very first workshop on the topic, and just being wide-eyed that a) this is a thing, b) it looks fun. (It is, actually, fun.) There’s a ton of reasons I love it—and hopefully, after _Closer_ concludes, you’ll be able to see some of the reasons why—but I also love that physical play doesn’t have any financial barriers to entry. (The irony of Edward “rich boy” Little being heavily into it has not escaped me.)

 **Timeline:** Hilariously, I actually started this verse for a Fitzier fic—it takes place six months from _Closer_ , at the winter version of the conference—but while I was working my way through the Fitzier setup, I was like ‘fuck it, I should write a quick one-off joplittle to establish the verse’, and lo and behold, my “quick one-off” turned out to be sixty k, and it runs parallel to a Tozer/Irving that I have yet to write, but which is visible in _Closer_ if you squint. So, uh, oops.

So this story fits into a very specific space in the timeline—that is, it’s prior to Fitzjames and Crozier having met, but it’s after the (second) Cracroft/Crozier breakup. (If you were wondering if that’s why Francis isn’t running his own damn booth, yes, that’s why. He’s very likely depression drinking in London at this very moment.)

 **Setting:** I wanted to stay true to the spirit of the whole, you know, boatload of white men going to Canada and being confused, but I wanted them to go for better reasons. It’s so rare that we get shows set in Canada, you know? And I feel very passionately about our winters here, in that I complain about them while they’re happening, but I do also kind of enjoy the challenge, in a really fucked-up sort of a way. So I set the fic in Canada too, and then, because I was explicitly setting it here, I also got to lean into a bunch of Canadian stereotypes (like Goodsir living his best life in plaid and denim and the inevitable Tim Horton’s jokes) and I actually had a lot of fun doing it, so I guess that was something I learned about myself.

**Story Considerations:**

**Primary Kinks:** So most people involved in BDSM have a “thing"—you know, the thing that they care about more than they care about any other things. And one of the most fun things for me about creating an AU like this is going through the characters and figuring out what everybody’s niche is. Like, it makes sense to me that Hickey would be that edgeplay asshole that’s in the kink scene specifically so he can fuck with people. Tozer having a military fetish (and also being a bit of a kink snob) totally fits with his whole "now what the bloody hell do people think that means?” speech.

If you’ve ever been to a fetish convention, you’ve seen guys like Blanky, who have been in the scene forever, and made their name handcrafting BDSM gear. They’re easy to talk to, and will totally tell you about that time they ran an entire scene using only items found in their kitchen. You’ve seen women like Sophia Cracroft, who have a cluster of people surrounding her at all times, and who is never short of someone who will bring her tea if it looks like she’s thirsty. And you’ve also seen guys like Ross, who are reasonably famous in their areas of expertise—the kind of guy that you see across the hall, and you’re like “shit, is that James Clark Ross?” (And it is! Holy shit!)

 **Canadian Kink:** So! I live in the prairies, and it’s as conservative as hell out here. That means there’s some specifics to kink culture that I’m not sure translate to other parts of Canada—and they definitely don’t translate back to England. For example, every public event I’ve ever been to (by which I mean every event that wasn’t being held in someone’s house) has mandated that penetration cannot occur during the event. No toys in orifices, no bits in other bits, no mucous membranes touching, no oral, no fingering, no handjobs, no intercourse, all that kind of stuff. I’m not convinced that you couldn’t have sex in a dungeon in, say, Vancouver, or Toronto, or any of the other bigger centers—but that hasn’t been my experience in the prairies, and I kept those restrictions for plot purposes in _Closer_. (Sorry, Jopson. I promise I still love you.)

Canadian weapons laws being what they are also means that some of the gear that’s totally okay in other places (like butterfly knives) is totally illegal in Canada (sorry, Tozer. No apologies for you, Hickey.). The sap gloves that Edward is mourning are, unfortunately, one of the items that get lost in the shuffle. Sap gloves are pretty neat—they’re leather gloves which are weighted with lead on the knuckles/backs of the hands. They make your punches harder, but they also protect your hands—and, for somebody like Edward, who does a lot of punching when he plays, that protection is definitely beneficial. Plus, they’re a bit of a signalling thing—having a set of sap gloves hanging off your belt makes it very clear what kind of things you’re into, and I think Edward is a bit bereft not having that this weekend, because he’s not used to having to introduce himself to people cold.

 **Edgeplay:** There’s sort of a, er. Spectrum of what is and isn’t considered to be “acceptable” kink, even within the kink community. Some kinds of kink are seen as more publicly acceptable, and some kinds are relegated back to the fringes and the dark corners. In the context of _Closer_ , that means Tozer, Hickey, and Little are our resident edgeplayers. This isn’t a judgement on the type of play they do (well, it is a judgement on Hickey, but we don’t have time to go into *gestures* all that), but it is a statement about the way that type of play is perceived. Sophia Cracroft can, with very little finessing, put photographs of her in rope suspension onto her various social media accounts, and as long as she’s clothed, it’s perfectly acceptable content to just have out there, and people are going to call it artistic and Instagram-worthy. Tozer, on the other hand, ain’t getting any recordings of interrogation scenes he’s run posted anywhere except to Pornhub. (The less we say about Hickey’s knife-play, the better.)

Similarly, because the rough physical play that Edward does looks fairly intense from the outside (and is pretty intense from the inside), he gets to live in the not-that-publicly-acceptable area of kink. The area of kink where they usually put the crash mats at the far end of the dungeon, because that way, if you don’t want to watch two people whaling on each other with their fists, you don’t need to see it. This “stigma” is important in Edward’s conception of himself, because on one hand, we see in his conversation with Goodsir that Edward absolutely knows his shit and, hero-worship of Crozier aside, has the knowledge base to be a fantastic educator in his own right—but we also see the subtle kinkshaming coming from both Hickey and Tozer about where Edward’s place is in all this. That is to say—Edward’s place is with them, in the dark shadowy spots, and not in the “socially acceptable” circles that Crozier’s circle of people (Jopson included) are perceived to be running in. (There’s a sense, coming from Tozer, that there’s no point in Edward pursuing getting onto the org committee for the conference itself, because they won’t want someone like Edward there—but, again, that’s some pretty insidious kinkshaming coming from Tozer, and we could all just let that go and be better for it. Goodsir clearly doesn’t feel like Edward’s presence would be a detriment.)

So, yeah. I’ll excuse Tozer’s kinkshaming bullshit temporarily, as he needs to sort himself out. I don’t think he’s trying to drag Edward down so much as he just thinks Edward’s being a bit delusional, and wants to save him the disappointment when Jopson invariably rejects him for being way too kinky and intense. (If Edward is moping around all weekend, he’ll be in the hotel room, and how’s Tozer supposed to get his dick sucked by random hookups then? “Yeah, come on back to mine, don’t mind my roommate, he’s a moody bastard and won’t participate even if we ask.” Not winning any prizes there, lads.)

I won’t excuse Hickey’s kinkshaming; he’s definitely trying to make Edward feel like shit on purpose. I could speculate as to the reasons, but they’re probably gross. (I mean, I know the reasons. Hickey’s gonna Hickey.)

(There’s a whole entire essay I could write about incorrect assumptions that literally everyone is making about the type of play Thomas Jopson must be into, based on his nice hair and nice eyes and nice smile, but I’ll just let Jopson handle those corrections on his own, as he’s very capable of doing so.)

 **Concerning the Chapter Title:** If you were gonna take a risk, Neddo, the social was the time to do it—and you done fucked that up, sweetheart.

Tomorrow is another day. Give it another shot then, yeah?

** Line Notes: **

> Edward looks across the hall again, cringes. “No, fuck, that’s—no, I think that’s Sophia Cracroft, Sol, I’m not—Christ. Sophia Cracroft, Jesus.”

I will never not find this introduction to Edward Little fucking hilarious, because he comes off as so competent from Jopson’s POV when he’s arguing with Hickey in the parking lot, and yet the moment we see Edward in his own POV, he’s just a mess. I love him very much, but he’s a mess. This was one of the deciding factors in the dual POV as well—I knew going in that the brunt of the story was going to be from Edward’s POV, but weaving in those occasional Jopson bits lets us see how Edward looks from the other side.

(Also, Tozer three hundred percent knows exactly who Sophia Cracroft is, because he demonstrates that, like, two sentences later, meaning that he’s literally just winding Edward up here, and it goes right over Edward’s head. God.)

> It’s the older guy across the hall that’s laughing his ass off, but the cutie is standing right next to him, looking down at his phone, his ears charmingly pink. 

As a reminder, Edward is wearing a white tank, and just stretched his arms out behind his back. The nipple piercings are _very_ obvious, Jopson was three hundred percent staring, and Blanky definitely caught him and is laughing his ass off about it.

> “…I know what this is about,” Tozer says, tying an orange bandana around his left bicep.

The orange bandana is a hanky code thing—which, yes, it’s dated, and it’s not really in use anymore, but Tozer seems like the kind of guy that would tattoo his kinks on his forehead just so everybody could see them if they would all fit. Failing to find any way to gracefully do that, we instead have the orange hanky (“anything goes”) on the left arm (“top”).

> (Older guy, thankfully, is wearing a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. Cutie isn’t. So there’s no obvious problems there.)

Jopson not wearing a ring indicates literally nothing about whether or not he’s available, but I guess whatever makes Edward feel better about himself is fine. He’s right with his assumption about Jopson, in this case, but it’s literally nothing more than a wild guess, and the mental hoops he’s jumping through only exist to make him feel better about himself.

(Esther usually attends these events with Blanky—but somebody needed to hold down the fort in London this time, and so she’s in London at present. It’s for the best, she can check on Francis every so often.)

> [Hickey] sticks his hand in the pocket of his latex cargo shorts…

I won’t take criticism on this fashion statement, constructive or otherwise.


	2. Aware

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [“The fuck got you out of bed this early in the morning? I told you, Hickey’s opening the booth. Finish your beauty sleep, Little.” Or, the one where an intense amount of eye contact is happening at increasingly shorter distances.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/56231206#workskin)
> 
> \---
> 
> Commentary for chapter two of Closer.

(I’m sorry about the chapter titles, lolsob. They are, in fact, “Risk”, “Aware”, “Consensual”, and “Kink”, plus a surprise title for the fifth chapter.)

((Okay, fine, I’m not nearly as sorry as I should be.))

[Chapter two of _Closer_ , the first installment in _Somewhere in Canada (the Terror kink AU)…_ is up](https://href.li/?https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/56231206)! What is wordcount! (Apparently shit to me, since this chapter is three times the length of chapter one!)

Same deal as last week–technical notes first, story notes after, line notes to finish it all up. (Although I still blame Edward, a number of this week’s line notes are Jopson’s fault, and he’s a lying liar on a number of occasions, the terrible sweetheart.)

Alright, here we go.

**Technical Considerations:**

**Chapter Length:** So, this story was intended to be much shorter than it is. Initially, the fic was a one-off. After all, it’s only taking place over a weekend, how long can it be? (lolsob–sixty k, as it turns out, and that’s with a significant number of hard cuts. I cringe for the future Fitzier, because the winter conference is longer than the summer one.)

Initially, I’d followed the same chapter structure I used in one of my earlier fics–one day = one chapter. Obviously, that worked fine for Friday, but didn’t work for Saturday or Sunday, both of which I’ve split into two chapters. I still feel like the chapter length is a bit obnoxious–I prefer a 7k chapter, and chapter two is 15k, but it’s the best place to make the cut, I think. I considered a cut after Edward’s talk got derailed by Hickey–but that would have left Edward in a really ugly headspace for a week while everybody waited for the next chapter, and I didn’t want to let him chill there knowing that Jopson is gonna make him feel better, like, immediately.

 **Hard Cuts:** One thing I really like about the source material for The Terror is that it uses hard cuts liberally, and something about that feels like it frees me up to do the same in my own work? So I cut the things that don’t matter to the story, even when they’re things that I care about. (That rope suspension scene with Sophia and Gore and Dundy was real good, but Edward did not give one single shit about it, and thus, it is not on the page. Similarly, we didn’t get dragged through any of the other panels, etc, that were happening throughout the day, and the one panel we actually did attend, Edward is giving by rote, without thinking about anything he’s saying, because Jopson! is! there! oh! god!)

**Story Considerations:**

**Goodsir:** Like, of course Goodsir moved to Canada. I don’t think it was for Silna, necessarily–and she would have been super unimpressed with that if it had been–but it wouldn’t have been _not_ for Silna either. I just think he really loved it here on his first visit, and that was it for him–he came home, he missed Canada, he went back, and he stayed. I’m sure he’s in the process of getting his citizenship, and in the meantime, he’s going out for hikes and taking pictures of elk and going ice-fishing and organizing kink conventions and generally just having a wonderful time living his best life, and I love that for him.

(And if he’s on the receiving end of Silna’s strap in increasingly regular frequency, I love that for him too.)

 **The Tozer-Little Experience:** So, outside of the joplittle, which was my primary reason for writing the fic–I also have, like, the world’s biggest soft spot for Solomon Tozer. And the dynamic that I ended up developing for Tozer and Little in this fic is a hell of a lot of fun, because it’s deeply intimate, and steeped in years and years of shared experiences, but it’s platonic at the same point–or, at least, what constitutes as platonic for them, which is more intimate and open than you would see for a lot of male friendships. (I’m putting a pin in the discussion of feelings as feelings relate to their friendship, but we’ll come back to it in a few more chapters.) If you asked either of them to describe an ideal partner for the other person, they could both do it, and they’ve got all kinds of stories about each other, which Tozer shares easily and at length, and Edward keeps his goddamn mouth shut about.

That easy camaraderie between them is, I think, why the takedown panel goes so wrong so quickly. Tozer has no reason to suspect anything is different than it has been any other time, and Edward isn’t admitting how much he’s obsessing over Jopson, so he’s also just stubbornly pretending things are fine. I don’t think that Tozer had any intention of letting Edward win, no matter how good Edward thinks his chances are, because it’s Tozer’s panel, and goddamn it, if Sol’s going to all the effort to give a talk, he’s gonna try to get his dick sucked as part of the aftermath, am I right, lads?

(Conferences that I’ve been to are hyper-careful about bodily fluids, and for good reason–so if blood is a possibility, everything should be tarped off and proper protective gear should be used, and Edward visibly bleeding all over everything would have been a Very Bad Look. Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.)

((Also, just as a side-note, can we talk about Tozer’s quick transitions between “shit, fuck, Little–”, “and that is a takedown!”, and “do not bleed in here, don’t fuck this up for me, I don’t know what the fuck your dumb ass was doing”? Because I love that Tozer’s first reaction is “holy FUCK are you OKAY” and then he immediately takes control of the room to finish his talk, and then leans in to threaten Nedward. As though the threat is gonna take away the part where your first reaction was being horrified that you clocked him in the face, Sol.))

 **The Jopson-Little Meet Cute:** Okay, fine, I guess it’s not really a meet cute when one of you is bleeding into a sink, and the other one of you snuck into a takedown panel late in the hopes of seeing your crush and gets the bonus experience of watching your crush totally get hit in the face. But, whatever. They’ll work with it.

One of the things I love about this scene is that the balance of power is exactly the opposite of where it would normally be–Jopson is the one controlling the scene here, through service, and Edward is the one that’s following Jopson’s lead. Jopson is, in canon, a caretaker, primarily, and I set this scene up so that he would shine, and I think he does that effectively here. Edward is the kind of guy that gets easily rattled when things don’t go the way he expects them to, and it’s indicative of their compatibility that he unwinds so easily for Jopson.

Also, I appreciate the hell out of Jopson gently bullying the topic of conversation around to giving talks, so that he could just slide his own talk under the door to gauge Edward’s reaction. After all, if one is a trans man, and one’s crush is a transphobe, better to find out before this goes any further. Between us, Jopson was reasonably sure things would be fine–after all, as Blanky notes later, he’s had his face in Edward’s blog*, and I’m pretty sure Edward went through his blog a while back and edited all his posts for gender- and trans-inclusive language, and left a footnote indicating he’d done so–but it was important for Jopson to make sure everything was on the table, and Edward’s meandering discussion of the requirements for giving presentations was as good an in as any.

*Jopson clearly didn’t know who Edward was by name on Saturday morning, but knows by Saturday afternoon. There’s any number of ways he might have found out Edward’s name, but I suspect he talked to someone** who had attended the power play panel he was on with Tozer earlier that day.

**I have a candidate in mind for this, but we’ll get back to it later.

 **The Rough Physical Play Panel:** Well, when that went wrong, it went real wrong, huh?

I think one of the things I’m enjoying so much about writing a modern Terror AU is that it lets me explore Hickey in more detail, because canon!Hickey just makes me so goddamn furious (the motherfucking BOOTS, he took James’ BOOTS, and then EVERYTHING ELSE, and I CAN’T) that I can’t even delve into him right now without wanting to throw things. But I can dig into him here, because I have the protection of this, you know, not being canon.

One of the things I really love about Hickey is that I think, one hundred percent, that he’s exactly the kind of person that pays attention to the things you’re interested in, and that makes it easy to start a friendship with him. I can guarantee that he knows every single item Tozer has ever stocked in his booth, and how well each of those items sells. I also know for sure that he’s read every single post on Edward’s blog, and can talk intelligently about any of them. However, Hickey is also exactly the kind of “friend” that will use that information against you at the drop of a hat if it benefits him in any way–and I can guarantee that the temptation was irresistible for Hickey here, because not only is it an excuse to deliberately trigger Edward’s anxiety in front of a room full of people right immediately before those people leave the room, thus guaranteeing it’s the last thing on their minds–but it’s an opportunity to do so in front of the guy that Edward has been interested in all weekend. From Hickey’s perspective, it’s for Edward’s own good–any idiot can see that Jopson is way out of Edward’s league, and the sooner Edward stops making an ass of himself, the better it’ll be for everyone involved. (I would also argue that if any of their friend group “deserve” to have more status in the community, Hickey feels that’s him, so any attempt by Edward to “rise above” by, say, associating with someone linked to Crozier, is going to be viciously stamped out.)

The miscalculation here, of course, is that Hickey has misread Jopson just the same as everyone else has misread Jopson. We’ll come back to why this mistake is important next week, I think.

(It’s unfortunate we didn’t get the good version of the panel, with the demo, because it’s very good–-Edward picks a random audience member, demonstrates the consent negotiation in front of everyone, and then walks through an entire gamut of activities, the intensity of which varies depending on how the person he’s chosen is enjoying it. This is the way that I had my first exposure to this type of play, and watching the talk was a goddamn delight–-and there’s nothing that makes someone look competent more than them just improvising an entire talk on the spot.)

 **Dungeon Setup:** So, again, because Canada, every dungeon I’ve ever been in has separated the drinking section from the fun section for safety reasons. Usually they’re in separate rooms, though I’ve been in a couple dungeons where the drinking section runs along one wall of the fun section. Because this is my fic, and I’ll improve it if I want, I went full bore on this and created that second-floor lounge that’s open to the dungeon below, so you can stand up there and drink and watch the dungeon from above (or you can sit up there and drink with Hickey, but yuck).

The showcase performance thing isn’t something I’ve seen at a kink conference before–-I borrowed that from burlesque conventions I’ve been to because I needed it for the upcoming Fitzier fic. I kinda wish Edward had paid attention, I feel like that was a really good rope suspension scene. But, he was standing too close to Jopson, and thus, nothing else mattered.

Also, is it really a dungeon if it doesn’t heavily rely on Enigma’s music? I don’t think I’ve been in a dungeon once without hearing Return to Innocence or Sadeness, and at this point, if I hear either of those pieces outside of the context of a dungeon, I get really nostalgic for dungeons.

(I guess while we’re talking about setup, I’ll also confirm that pretty much everybody* is staying on-site here–the hotel has a bunch of space set aside for the kink conference, and as long as people booked their rooms quickly, their hotel rooms are also in the same venue, so there’s no need for transport, or going outside, or anything like that. Poor Nedward can have his meltdown about collars without needing to call a cab once.)

*I know a certain repressed somebody who has opted not to stay at a hotel full of perverts, but, uh. I mean, it’s a Choice, but maybe sit with yourself a second, John.

**Line Notes:**

> “Dude,” Tozer says, swinging his duffel bag off his shoulder and booting it under the table. “I had the most repressed guy in my talk this morning, it was fucking brilliant.”

Hi, Irving.

> Edward can’t quite tell what Jopson is talking about, they’re too far apart for him to be able to eavesdrop. He wishes he was over there, though. Listening.

They’re talking about you, Edward. Jopson knows who you are by this point, and he is three hundred percent telling Blanky about your blog right now.

> He hasn’t paid attention to the specifics, because it’s not his talk, and it doesn’t matter.

Except it does matter, Edward, because one of those times the door opened and Jopson came in.

> Jopson takes another step forward, his hands down at his sides, palms facing Edward. “I saw what happened,” he says. His voice is gentle, low. Hypnotic.

I appreciate Jopson approaching Edward like Edward is a wild animal that’s going to spook at any moment, because Edward is, in fact, a wild animal that’s going to spook at any moment.

> “One of the better quality sessions I’ve seen this weekend,” Jopson says.

Thomas Jopson, you are a lying liar. It is the first day of the convention, and this is the first instance in which you’ve left your booth for any significant length of time. You haven't _been_ to any sessions.

> “—you must see there are gaps. I was thinking, maybe, there’s another conference in six months…”

I can guarantee that this is a conversation that has been had with Francis in slowly increasing levels of volume, and I can also guarantee that Francis has been very supportive of Jopson wanting to fix those gaps. I would also side-eye the length of time (none) it took Jopson to pull up his fully-completed notes for a talk that Edward notes later is ready to go, and doesn’t need any alterations. (Anyone taking bets on whether or not Goodsir has seen this? Yeah, I wouldn’t bet against it either.)

> It’s only after Jopson’s left that Edward realizes his black handkerchief is still on the edge of the sink.

Remember that conversation we had last week about the hanky code? Good, because Edward doesn’t.

> “Don’t wanna have a discussion about feelings if we don’t have to,” Tozer says gruffly.

Translation: if your eyes are wet because I smoked you in the face, then we’ll have that conversation, but for fuck’s sake please provide me with literally any other explanation–oh, thank fuck, I forgot about your septum piercing, perfect, good, onwards.

(I’d argue that Edward’s probably all up in his feelings from Jopson’s talk, BUT both of them are talking around everything in this scene, so I guess we’ll just let them have their privacy on that one.)

> They’re walking down the hall, and literally anyone could walk past Edward right now—fucking James Fitzjames could walk past Edward right now—and there is no way in hell he would notice, because Jopson is right there…

James Fitzjames, “that online guy” and most recognizable kink celebrity, would be So Offended by this, and the humility would be good for him.

> They’re walking side-by-side, Jopson just a fraction behind Edward, and Edward can’t tell if it’s on purpose.

Jopson knows how to sub–it’s on purpose, Nedward.

(I should note that this isn’t at all a requirement for subbing–but it’s part of how Jopson, in particular, submits, and since that’s how he wants to interact with Edward, that’s how he’s behaving now.)

> —not a blog post from five years ago that he’d kept up because there’s hardly any information out there and he wanted to make sure that people were aware of the risks and safety concerns, and—

And, I mean, also because you like to do this, Edward. Let’s not beat around the bush here, you’re not writing entire blog posts about things you have an academic interest in for safety reasons, although it would be totally valid if you did. But you aren’t. You wrote an entire post about how to safely fit your fist into someone’s ass because you did a lot of research as to how to do it safely and then subsequently _did it on multiple occasions_ and also _enjoy doing it_.

> “It’s right there on the blog post,” Jopson continues, fingers clenched on his notebook. “The exact same blog post you’re citing has the answers to the questions you’re asking, and it’s disingenuous of you to…to purposefully derail his panel and pretend that the answers aren’t right there.”

If Edward was thinking critically about any of this instead of just bluescreening, he’d realize that it’s Significant that Jopson knows this without consulting his cellphone, which he hasn’t needed to do here, because his hands are still on his notebook, which means that Jopson either a) sought out this post specifically, b) made it multiple years back in Edward’s blog archives, or c) both AND remembers it in detail.

But, he’s Edward, and he’s not thinking about shit right now except possibly how nice it would be if the building just randomly caved in on top of him. Not everybody else. Just him.

> Jopson’s posture relaxes slightly as he exhales. “I was wondering about aftercare,” he says. “What you would normally recommend.”

Translation: Reassure me that you know what the fuck to do with me after we’ve just done everything that you’ve been talking about, because I AM DOWN TO DO THIS RIGHT NOW.

> “Fucking peckerhead,” Tozer says, straightening up and rolling his shoulders, his eyes flashing. “I needed him to do some goddamn work.”

Yeah, well, Hickey’s got no fucking work ethic, so I dunno what the fuck you were thinking, Tozer. Duty owed, indeed.

> It’s the guy that was watching Tozer. His eyes are burning with fanaticism. “It’s not too late,” he repeats. “Your crisis is an opportunity to repair yourself.”

Irving, sweetheart, buddy. You are at a fetish convention. Nobody here is interested in repairing themselves, and neither are you or you would not be here.

> “Penny for your thoughts,” Jopson says. He’s still behind his booth, which is entirely too far away from Edward. “And Blanky’s due back any minute, so unless you want an interrogation over what you’re planning to do with the collar, you might want to come over to my side and look at books instead, I promise I won’t give you the third degree about anything.”

JOPSON, you are a LIAR. You fully intend to give him the third degree about everything, you just want him physically closer to you while you do it.

> He’s not quite close enough to hear the conversation, but he is close enough to watch the way Jopson’s hands move in front of his body as he speaks, realizes after a moment that he’s signing. Realizes a few moments later that the words he’s saying aren’t English—and only then because it’s a different rhythm than Jopson usually speaks in, a little more halting, less fluid.

Francis’ crash course in Netsilik went alright, apparently! I’m sure Jopson is disappointed in himself for not being fluent, but Silna will confirm to Francis that Jopson tried hard.

> “We’re acquainted,” Jopson says carefully. Then adds, “It’s been a bit since I’ve spoken to her.”

LIAR, Jopson, you were literally in a deep conversation with her YESTERDAY. Edward, of course, does not notice this, even though he observed said conversation. (*cough*himbo*cough*)

> Jopson shrugs, the motion a little self-deprecating. “That’s it. I’ll be finished then.” He sets his jaw, looks away. “I imagine we’d need to be more concerned about your availability than mine.”

Bold of you to assume that Edward “anxiety” Little actually checked his Fetlife messages and sorted out any play dates with anybody in advance.

> Blanky grins at him. “That’s more like it. If you’ve got a couple minutes to wait, I’ll cut back the extra leather on the straps here for you.”

A number of people who make collars leave extra length on the straps in case it’s needed. In this case, Blanky knows it won’t be, so it can get trimmed back before Edward even leaves the booth. (Also, the Edward Little energy of Edward dropping a bunch of money on collars for Jopson, and then immediately freaking out and sticking them back in his hotel room?)

As an aside, considering Blanky is #teamjoplittle, I would give so much to see the content of the inevitable groupchats that are happening right now.


	3. Consensual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [“Nah, Jopson will send you the numbers in the morning, I didn’t think to ask him for specifics. Christ, no, he’s not asleep, Francis—boy’s got himself a date. Yup, that’s the one. Dunno, wasn’t planning on reporting back. Indecisive, but seems competent enough. In pretty deep, regardless. No, both of them. Yeah. Hey, you see Esther lately?” Or, the one where a particular corner of the dungeon is extensively used.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/56918404#workskin)
> 
> \---
> 
> Commentary for chapter three of Closer.

[Chapter three of _Closer_ , the first installment in _Somewhere in Canada (the Terror kink AU)…_ is now up! It’s a long one again! The author continues to not be sorry!](https://href.li/?https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/56918404)

Same deal as last week–technical notes first, story notes after, line notes to finish it all up.

Alright, here we go.

**Technical Considerations:**

**Language:** Phew, okay. So, I’ve written plenty of “hard kink written hard” (and arguably some “soft kink written hard”), but with this piece, I specifically wanted to do “hard kink written soft” so, uh, language is a thing! Ie, the sentence “Edward curled his hand into a fist and punched Jopson” does not belong in this fic, because there is nothing soft about that sentence no matter how much ~~Edward loves him~~ positive regard Edward is feeling toward his play partner.

So in order to make this fly the way I wanted to (ie, softly), I tried to avoid over-use of words like “fist”, “hit”, “punch”, and that type of thing. I ended up in a really interesting rabbit hole that I think helped me get further into Edward’s head, because the narrative had to become more focused on the technical aspects of what he’s doing, and the physical results it’s having on Jopson. It also emphasizes the continual assessment of how things are going that’s necessary to do this kind of play safely–especially when it’s the first time doing this type of play with a partner. And, it’s in-character–Edward is an over-thinker anyway.

(I think the scene would have been softer, and probably more romantic, in Jopson’s POV, but it would have been far blurrier as well, because he’s pretty deep in subspace.)

While I’m talking about language, I’ll just mention one other thing–Edward’s knowledge of trans men has been academic up to this point, and he’s approaching it the same way he approaches everything else, which is listening, learning as fast as he can, and taking Jopson’s lead. It also means he’s using–and will continue to use–the same language for Jopson as he would for any other man.

**Capitalization of Sir:** There’s a whole entire thing in some subsets of BDSM about capitalization. At the extreme end, all references to the dominant are capitalized, all references to the submissive are lower case, and all references to both are split-capped (is that how it’s referred to? I have no idea, but it describes what I mean, so I’m going with it.). It can lead to sentences like “In the dungeon, My pet, michael, always follows the rules W/we have agreed on”.

I can’t see either Jopson or Little going for that, so we have the more casual version of it going on here–“Sir” is capitalized, but everything else is conventionally capitalized. In a (hypothetical) situation where Jopson was collared to Edward, but referred to someone else in a casual “yes, sir” way, “sir” would be lower case. But then, for extra confusion, for someone like Sir John, where the sir is part of his scene name, it’d stay capitalized, even though Jopson’s not collared to him.

(For some reason, I can’t picture Sir John not using Sir John as a scene name. James Clark Ross, on the other hand, I feel can take or leave the title unless he’s entered into a formal arrangement with someone, in which case that’s between him and Anne and whoever else to sort something out.)

**Hard Cuts:** That’s right, I put a hard cut in the middle of the dungeon scene. In my defense, it takes a while to bruise someone whose skin is resistant to bruising, and it’s a very repetitive process. Jopson and Edward had a perfectly nice time without us, and I documented most of the good bits for you. (I do feel a bit bad for skipping the majority of the aftercare, but imo, the story arc is fine as it is, and we see enough to know that Jopson has his jacket around his shoulders the way he wanted it, so we can assume Edward bossed it out for the rest of the aftercare too.)

**Story Considerations:**

**Bootblacking:** I am not a bootblack. Ideally, this isn’t obvious, because I did Online Research, but for people who do bootblack, I’m sorry if I fucked it up.

Also, one thing that I learned in the course of my research is that there’s two different kinds of boots–regular boots, which need to be polished, and then oil-tanned boots, which need to be conditioned instead. I gave Edward oil-tanned boots, because that involves a hell of a lot of leg massage via rubbing conditioner into the boot, and I wanted Edward to have a nice tactile experience. (Okay, fine, I also wanted Jopson to be able to show off his skillset.)

**Consent Negotiation:** I love consent negotiation. I think it’s great foreplay, a great way to build hype for a scene, and I think it gives you a sense of a person before you go in and do intimate and/or dangerous stuff with them. I think Edward’s initial plan for having the consent negotiation once they’d moved over to the mats was good. I think Jopson’s plan of doing the consent negotiation while Edward was a captive audience getting his boots conditioned was better.

There’s so many bits and pieces to consent negotiation as well–there’s the physical bit (like medical conditions and whether you’ve had food/water recently–after all, you’re putting your body through something challenging, and if you’re dehydrated or fasting, that’s not ideal conditions), there’s the mental bit (like not liking to be humiliated, and any trigger words or actions that should be avoided), and then there’s the actual activities that you’re going to plan on doing. Typically, there would be an additional bit, and that would be the sharing of STI results. Edward skipped that during this negotiation for two reasons–firstly, he generally just does dry play, ie, no body fluids exchanged. And, secondly, no sex in this particular dungeon. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have hurt to have done that.

(Jopson clearly did his own risk assessment on the barrier-free blowjob, and was fine with his chances–but, then, I suspect if you read between the lines on Edward’s blog, the lack of a fluid-bonded partner, or an intimate partner of any kind, would have been apparent.)

**Dungeon Monitors:** Dungeon monitors (DMs) are present in most dungeons, except the play-at-your-own-risk-in-someone’s-basement type (and sometimes even those have them). Their general function is to make sure that people are safe, that equipment is being cleaned properly after use, that medical treatment is provided if it’s needed, and that type of thing. I figured the medical team was a good translation, so between Goodsir and McDonald, they’re splitting the dungeon between themselves for the first chunk of the night. (Presumably Peddie and Stanley are on the later shift, or maybe Bridgens is assisting, but either way, Edward was not paying attention and did not care.)

(I bet Stanley hates dungeon shifts.)

DMs generally wear vests or some sort of gear that makes them easy to spot, which is especially important when they’re almost always members of the community as well, meaning that they need to distinguish between when they’re on duty, and when they’re playing. The radios are handy in case an ambulance needs to be called, which does sometimes happen, but it’s also good to allow them to communicate with each other.

For the majority of play, it’s not necessary to talk to a DM beforehand. (YMMV, consult your dungeon rules, etc.) In Edward and Jopson’s case, since they’re going fairly hard, it’s a good idea to give a heads-up to your DM to let them know that the scene is happening. McDonald would have been watching them pretty sharply as the play got going, and then probably less so once they settled into it.

Edward noticed exactly zero of this, because he didn’t care.

(I guess an additional note there is that sometimes there’s a “fear factor” involved in physical play, where the dominant/top partner is specifically and consensually trying to instigate a fear reaction in the submissive/bottom partner. So in that case, having a DM aware of what’s happening and what the safewords are is real important to make sure that everything is above-board, ie, the safewords aren’t being deliberately ignored.)

**Dungeon Rules:** They totally would have fucked if they hadn’t been in Canada.

Sorry to both of them, but sorry to Jopson in particular.

**Subspace:** So subspace is basically an altered state of consciousness that can be dropped into during BDSM play. Every submissive/bottom gets there at different speeds and through different methods. Jopson is a masochist, so pain will get him there–but he’s deeply into ritual as well, and so just the act of bootblacking for an hour prior to Edward getting there has already gotten him started on that path–though, as he notes, not far enough that he can’t pull himself back out of it if it’s no longer appropriate to be in it. It’s sort of like a hot bath, in that way–if you’ve just dipped your toes in it, fine, you can go answer the doorbell. But if you’ve been submerged in the tub for an hour, you’re not getting out unless something really pressing happens.

The general, uh, fuzzy nature of subspace means that Edward’s call not to discuss facefucking was a good one, because Jopson would have just said yes, and Edward would have derailed himself wondering if it was an honest yes. As it was, Edward got the unprompted deepthroating, and I don’t think he has any regrets whatsoever about that one.

**Line Notes:**

> There’s no way for Jopson to know that Edward purchased two collars for him, but he’s showing off his neck like he’s trying to make a point of it, like he’s trying to bring out all the possessive bits that Edward is trying to keep tamped down.

That’s exactly what he’s doing, Edward. He’s trying to gently coax you into going feral on him.

> He should have adjusted his dick before he sat down, but it’s too late to do that now without being territorial about it.

Tozer wouldn’t hesitate for one moment. He adjusts his dick when he feels like it. Just as an aside.

> _I don’t see you_ , Edward wants to say. _How have I lived my entire fucking life without ever having seen you?_

It’s because you and Tozer go to the shittier clubs with louder music and younger people, and I don’t think Jopson has been to a club like that in his entire life.

(God, I have, like, an entire essay worth of headcanons about Jopson and his _Terror_ and _Erebus_ experiences.)

> “Safeword,” Edward says, after some time has passed.
> 
> Jopson looks up at him, eyes wide, and says nothing.

So, we were talking about Jopson’s risk assessments earlier, re: the blowjob, and here’s another point where Jopson is flirting with the possibility of playing with Edward irresponsibly. I think there’s a couple different things to observe here–and the first is that the ideal response is the one that Edward gives, which is essentially “absolutely fuck that, we’ll play with a safeword that you’re going to use when you need it, or we won’t play at all”. The other responses are…less than ideal, but Jopson might have still played with Edward under those circumstances anyways, and that’s on Joppie to justify, cuz I’m not gonna bend over backwards to justify that for him. I do think, though, that there’s a couple points that happen over the course of the weekend where nobody would blame Jopson if he was doing an assessment and figuring out–is there the possibility of a long-term thing here, or is this a one-weekend-only thing? And in every case, Edward is coming down solidly into the long-term possibility category.

> Jopson frees the laces, runs them between his fingers. “I’ll get chatty before I get quiet. When I stop responding verbally when you speak to me, pull me back out, please—speak to me, get me something to drink. Drape my jacket back over my shoulders.” His mouth twists a moment. “I may get…affectionate, but you shouldn’t—”

There’s so much here that I want to talk about! First of all, Jopson is highly comfortable with and cognizant of his own response to this type of play, and he’s able to articulate that response very clearly–which is something that comes with experience. He’s communicating to Edward the point where he wants the play to stop–ie, when he no longer responds verbally–and he’s also clear about what needs to be done to gently tug him back out of it. (Coming back out of it isn’t always required, but in this case, since they’re sleeping separately and working in the morning, it’s for the best.)

If Jopson had finished his last sentence, it would have been along the lines of “I may get affectionate, but you shouldn’t take it seriously if I do”. I pulled directly from Jopson’s abandonment issues in canon for that one, and it hurts my feelings to put it here, but it’s here so that Edward can respond appropriately ~~this time~~. I think any feelings that Jopson has during scenes are legitimate–but I also suspect, based on this, that Jopson has been affectionate during scenes before, and had that affection rebuffed, or had it indicated to him that the affection wasn’t welcome or needed, so he’s used to disclaiming it. Which, ouch.

> “Good job,” he says, voice low and right next to Jopson’s ear. “Pack your things. I’m coming back for you.”

Speaking of AU!Edward Littles that didn’t fuck up their decisions, here’s one right here.

> His hand is pleasantly tingling, his mind starting to fuzz out with endorphins, and he wants Jopson to feel the same—

So Edward puts literally zero thought into his own headspace throughout this scene, because that’s the kind of POV character he is, but you can see the beginning of his…actually, I don’t even know the word for it. Whatever the equivalent of subspace is for doms, Edward is getting into it.

> I like symmetry

Says the man with the tattoo on one arm. Alright, Ned. Alright.

> “Mrf.” Jopson swallows, the movement of his neck something Edward can actually feel, now that he’s carrying Jopson fully. “Don’t want to derail the scene—I just—a minute—your cock is quite distracting.”

I love that all the physical play was just fine, but it’s being nestled against Edward’s hardon that makes Jopson need a minute. (Which, fair.)

> “Yeah,” Edward manages. “I can—I can do that. You, uh, the safewords?”

One of the things I really love about Edward here is that when he gets overwhelmed with how awesome something is, he reverts back to safety and checking in with his partner. (I’m pretty sure you could contrast that with Tozer, who I’m pretty sure would just talk filth until he’d gotten a grip on things again, and Crozier, who I see as pretty unflappable during play considering that he hasn’t met a certain “online guy” yet.)

> “I can’t believe we can’t fuck in here,” Jopson mutters grouchily.

Couldn’t get ploughed in the dungeon the way I wanted, 0/10 on TripAdvisor.

> Edward puts his hands behind his head, tugs at his own hair a moment to ground himself, and then curls his hands into fists where Jopson can’t see them, brings them down and around, quick and sudden, thumping the sides of his hands into Jopson’s ribs.

The very first time I was in a rough play workshop, this move was demonstrated. The demo bottom was facing the audience, and the presenter was sitting on a table behind him. They had him put his hands behind his neck and just stand there and wait while they was talking about something else, but from our position in the audience, we could see them raise their hands above their head, and knew what they were going to do, because they mimed it out for us first. I think that’s where I fell in love with this kind of play, because they made it fun.

> “I’ll go faster for the rest,” Edward promises. “Keep counting, and you’ll get your reward on five.”

Or, you know, on six, because one of you wanted five hits in a row and restarted the count on purpose, and the other one of you stuck to your promise of going with a verbal command of _five_ because there wasn’t enough time to go through the whole ‘what is the correct response here’ and muscle memory won out over anxiety domming. (You can save your “oops”, Jopson, we all know it’s insincere.) 

> Jopson doesn’t scream. His entire body goes stiff, breath sucking quick into his lungs and his fingernails digging sharply into Edward’s bare back, legs clenching around Edward’s thigh, and it’s like time just fucking _stops_ for one ecstatic moment until Jopson goes limp, his hands patting randomly on Edward’s back, over the scratches he’s just left in Edward’s skin that Edward is going to treasure forever, because he did that to Jopson and he’s going to wear these scratches with fucking _pride_.

Y'all, Edward “so excited about the part where he scratched me that I completely missed the part where he came” Little. He’ll be here all weekend.

> Jopson blinks, slow and easy. “Quite lovely, thank you. Everything cleaned up?”

I’m deeply in favour of doms who look after cleaning up the space while their subs recover. I’m not convinced that Little and Jopson will fall into that pattern permanently, but I think it’s a sweet gesture on Edward’s part that he looks after everything for their first time. It’s also a very encouraging thing for Jopson–because, say, if he was trying to make sure that he wasn’t going to have his service taken for granted, this is a good indication that it won’t be.

> Edward feels vaguely like he should demur, out of manners, or, uh. Concern for Jopson’s knees, or—or his, um. Aftercare. Or. Or something.

I love deep POV.

> Edward raises his eyebrows, deliberately puts his hands flat on the wall behind him. He’s suddenly very, very hard. “I’m not gonna stop you if you want to do it yourself,” he says, voice rough. “That’s hot as fuck.”

*eyeballs emoji*

(And we can make a note of that particular detail for the next chapter, when Edward awkwardly discloses something that Jopson already suspects–or, at least, would suspect if he weren’t currently high as fuck on happy endorphins.)

> “Oh my god, I am so sorry,” Edward says. He swallows. “I—uh. Sorry, this is stupid, I forgot they were there—I generally do, you know, warn people in advance, this isn’t how I normally—I, uh.”

I suspect the actual issue here is that the last time Edward had his dick sucked, there wasn’t nearly as much metal in it, so “hey my dick is heavily pierced” isn’t a conversation that he’s used to having, but Edward can excuse this however he likes.

> …it’s just—he’s just—he’s never—not without his partner gagging, and there were always other things they could do, there were always—fuck—this was never a priority…

Little refuses to think of his own dick as big, because it’s the dick he’s always had, so unfortunately, this is the closest we’re gonna get to confirmation of his dick size in his POV.

> Edward can feel—oh, fuck, no, that’s not just his cock, he can feel his own piercings in Jopson’s throat, the hard balls of the barbells firm under his fingertips, and Edward’s balls tighten.

I don’t want to admit how much time I spent trying to figure out if this was a legitimate thing, but it was more than an hour, I couldn’t find an answer, I have no one to ask, and I liked the mental image too much to let it go, so now we’re all stuck with it.

I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not.

> Edward takes a deep breath, steps into the hotel room, and shoulders his responsibilities.

Edward, sweetie. Sol would be the first one to tell you that he can handle himself.

I mean, we can all agree that he clearly didn’t handle himself particularly well tonight.

But he’d be the first one to tell you to fuck off.


	4. Kink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [“Though, Harry—you said the lad from the military booth, yes? Surely you don’t mean the one at the back end of the dungeon last night, because I was watching, and he didn’t seem—oh, yes, the other one, alright. Yes, I’ll go talk to Tuunbaq. Thank you for letting me know.” Or, the one in which the merch hall is open, but the military booth is mostly closed.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/57243688#workskin)
> 
> \---
> 
> Commentary for chapter four of Closer.

[Chapter four of _Closer_ , the first installment in _Somewhere in Canada (the Terror kink AU)…_ is now up!](https://href.li/?https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/57243688) It’s a plot-heavy chapter! There’s some platonic kink! There’s the plot to an entirely different story if you squint!

Technical notes first, story notes after, line notes to finish it all up.

Alright, here we go.

**Technical Considerations:**

**Chapter Titles:** So I didn’t have any particular chapter titles in mind when I started this story. The original structure I’d planned for was one chapter for Friday, one for Saturday, one for Sunday, with Jopson POV at the very beginning of chapter one, and then again at the very end of three.

Obviously, uh, there was too much story for that to fly. So I cut it where I needed to cut it, and swapped my structure to have Jopson POV at the beginning of every chapter (and bonus Jopson POV at the end of the chapter). So I needed five chapter titles. First I couldn’t think of anything good, and then it occurred to me that I could name four of them after the RACK acronym (Risk Aware Consensual Kink), and then it was super fascinating from a storytelling perspective because of the way the chapters lined up. Like, _Risk_ deals with the risks that Edward _didn’t_ take because he totally ducks out of talking to Jopson that first night. _Aware_ covers them starting to know each other. _Consensual_ covers the dungeon scene, _Kink_ covers platonic kink, and also the very normal way that both of them have integrated kink into their regular lives, and how it leads to these intimacies that are normal for them, but would be strange from a vanilla perspective or in a vanilla relationship. And then, finally, since I needed a fifth chapter title, _Aftercare_ seemed like the obvious solution, which cracks me up because the entire chapter is, uh, well. I mean, it’s aftercare for them. But yeah.

 **Mornings:** So I wanted the structure of this fic to be all chronological in order–ie, no re-covering events that have already happened from someone else’s POV within the same fic. (The Tozer/Irving fic, obviously, will be covering many of the same events, but it’ll be different enough that it won’t matter.) Which led to an icky bit for me, because I split the chapters differently than I anticipated (see above), and needed to start the day out with Jopson-POV even though I already had this lovely Little-POV drafted out.

Thankfully, Jopson came in for the win with that one, because he’s a morning person, and Ned isn’t, and their alarms were set for different enough times that I could go right from Jopson’s wakeup to Ned’s wakeup without having to retread the same information or the same section of the day (technically, there’s a small chronological overlap, I think Jopson is probably eating breakfast when Little is trying to resurrect himself from his bed, but I’ve decided I Don’t Care).

 **The Three Bears’ Bed:** This is such a smol technical note, but I wanted to bring it up because it’s one of the really fun things that you can do with deep POV. It’s implied (and confirmed in the next chapter) that Jopson and Edward are in essentially identical hotel rooms. But if you squint–they both describe their beds very differently. Jopson’s bed is “too big”, ie, he clearly sleeps on a single at home, and it’s probably not as nice as the hotel bed. Edward’s bed, a carbon copy of the queen bed Jopson is sleeping in, is “too small”, ie, he’s clearly got a king-sized monstrosity for himself back at home. I absolutely live for these kinds of things that are literally too minor to be noticed (nor should they be, they’re meant to fade into the background), but which communicate so much about the characters.

(Ah, god, there’s going to be so much adjusting for them to do in London. Their lives are very, very different. Jopson is starting to clue in, and he’s going to have to sit with that once he has a clear head and lets all the subconscious stuff he’s been picking up on actually gel together. Right now, he’s very much in the ‘whoa that looks expensi–hooooly fuck Ned Little is hot’ phase. He’ll have a Moment in London, though, where he’ll sit bolt upright in his single bed and go _wait a minute he put fifties in the donation bin when I blacked his boots and didn’t even blink, he just casually throws large denomination bills* around_.)

*I grew up low income, and I never carry anything bigger than a twenty in my wallet. People who are used to having more money, in my experience, tend to carry larger bills in their wallets. I know a fifty isn’t actually a large denomination bill, but it is when you aren’t used to carrying that kind of money around. Fifties make me tense until I break them. If I have a hundred, it’s because someone gifted it to me, and I am gonna stress about it until I get it to the bank to deposit. Twenties are good for me, thanks.

**Story Considerations:**

**Jopson’s Work Ethic:** Jopson’s work ethic is in full force here, and I love to see it. I also love to see how firm he is about not hiding it. Like, Blanky understands how rare it is for Jopson to find someone he connects with the way he connects with Nedward, and was perfectly willing to skip the dungeon* to give Jopson another go at it. But Jopson, at some point, has transitioned from 'perfect, a weekend hookup’ to 'perfect, I would like Ned in my life always’. (Gonna guess it was that post blowjob cuddle-nap that tipped it over, to be perfectly honest.) And Jopson knows that for Ned to be in his life always, Jopson needs to be realistic with him about what his life actually looks like–so he’s going to work the long hours that he usually works, and he’s going to run Blanky’s booth so that Blanky can head to the dungeon tonight, and when Edward asks to be told literally anything about Jopson’s life, Jopson moves immediately to telling Ned about his job.

(You’ll note that Jopson has a schedule for working in the morning, the afternoon, and also the evening, ie, decidedly more than an eight hour day/forty hour work week. He did not mention that he frequently goes to _Terror_ , and then shows back up at three am to do more work in a haze of subspace, but I’m sure he’ll get around to it.)

I think it’s important to Jopson that Edward accept him as he is–that is, no arguing about what comes first (it’s work), or what Jopson’s priorities are (also work), or how much availability Jopson has for a relationship (all of it…after work). So in that sense, this is pretty much a trial by fire–Jopson is saying 'look, this is what my life is like, and if you fit, you can stay’, and Edward, in turn, is saying 'please just let me sit next to you, I like it here’. (I’m sure Tozer would be irritable about Edward’s changed loyalties if he weren’t currently sorting out, you know, every bad decision he made the previous night).

*This is not a Blanky-specific thing. If Esther were here instead, she and Jopson would have the same arrangement. I think either Blanky or Esther would be equally fun to play with, don’t you?

 **Duty and Responsibility:** I also love the differing approaches to duty and responsibility, as displayed by Joplittle–Edward talks, multiple times, about his duties and responsibilities here as something that he needs to shoulder, like it’s a too-heavy pack that he’s hauling around behind him when he would really rather just pull the covers over his head and stay there. Jopson, however, is thriving under his.

I would posit that, perhaps, if Edward managed to distance himself further from Hickey’s bullshit, that maybe his responsibilities wouldn’t suck so much. But for Edward to get away from Hickey’s bullshit, that would mean Tozer would also have to put his foot down, and Tozer has been ambivalent about doing that, so far.

 **Sadomasochism, and the ‘Gold-Star’ Dom:** Oh, Edward, my sweetheart, my dear, you have a track record of dating terrible people, and hanging out with people who kinkshame you, and I am so sorry that it’s come to this.

There’s this really fascinating (by which I mean it’s incredibly toxic) culture difference between old guard spaces and the “newer” spaces. For people Francis’ age who grew up in old guard leather kink scenes, they would have come up in the scene submitting first, and then either continuing to submit, or transitioning into being a dominant as they gained experience. However, for newer spaces–and here, I’m talking about something that was starting to happen for people around Fitzjames’ age–there started to be a shift toward just doing one or the other*. By the time we get to people in the same age range as Little**, Tozer, and Jopson, the emphasis on picking one or the other is much more prominent. You should 'know’ your orientation when you enter the scene–and then that’s typically where you stay. There’s no requirement for a dom to have ever subbed–and there’s no requirement for doms to be familiar with the business end of their implements either. (If I had a dollar for every talk I’d been to where a dom was proud that they’ve never actually tested gear on themselves, I would have a lot of dollars.)

This leaves Little in an awkward spot–he’s got no interest in submitting (as per the way he nopes out of any sort of cuffs or protocol with James Clark Ross), but, unlike Tozer, who tolerates getting hit in the context of fighting but doesn’t particularly like it, Little actively enjoys the pain of getting hit. Based on how awkwardly he discloses that to Jopson, we can infer (correctly) that it’s gone down badly in previous hookups.

(The general stereotype that dominant-sadist-top*** and submissive-masochist-bottom are one scale instead of, you know, three different scales, is not helping Ned at all here.)

So Ned is in this spot as a sadomasochist dom where he’s had a hard time finding a partner that is willing to accept that he has a masochist streak as well. Enter Jopson…

*I think, though I’m not sure, that part of this shift was kink culture moving into the straight scene as well. Heterosexual kink tends to avoid the formalized learning process, and focus strictly on I Have Always Been A Dom.

**For the purposes of kink!AU, I’m going with approximate show ages for everyone–I think I saw somewhere that historically, Little was older than Fitzjames–but I’m going with an older Fitzjames and a younger Little here, for ~~Fitzier~~ Reasons.

***Note that I’m talking about top and bottom in a BDSM sense here–the one who wields the flogger vs the one who has the flogger used on them. The penetrator/penetratee during intercourse is an entirely separate thing, which….you guessed it….is also unrelated to the above-mentioned scales.

 **Service:** Jopson thrives when he’s engaged in acts of service. I really loved working with the translation of canon-to-kink!Jopson, because it’s really fascinating to dig into how those canon aspects of his personality translate. Like, the long hours as a steward translate directly to the long hours that he works for Francis. But those acts of service translate really easily into submission as well. (I would posit that, for people who pursue more 'lifestyle’ kink as opposed to 'bedroom-only’ kink, there’s a great chance that they’ll pursue jobs that play to those strengths.)

The particular benefit to this that’s working in Ned’s favour here is that Jopson loves nothing more than to arrange things for people to make sure they have what they need. So this intersects perfectly with Ned’s typical methods for managing his top drop–if Jopson can leverage his connections to make sure that Ned has access to people that will let him bottom-but-not-submit for them when he needs it, well, that’s a win for both of them.

(I would hazard a guess, if you squinted, that Ned is sexually monogamous, and generally dates other monogamous people, which sometimes makes the negotiation of play with other people outside the dyad a non-starter. I would also guess that Jopson wouldn’t consider monogamy to be a particular value of his, and so anything he can do to make sure Ned is looked after is perfect for him.)

 **Top Drop:** Pretty much any kink conference that even slightly touches on educational aspects will have a talk about subdrop, typically led by a sub or a panel of subs, or sometimes by a dom/sub pair, discussing how to properly care for one’s sub, how to deal with subdrop, and all those coping kinds of mechanisms. I can guarantee Edward has attended a number of those talks, written at least one blog post, and probably could speak on it if you really bullied him into it.

Those same conferences typically do not talk about top drop. I’ve been to lots of talks on sub drop. I’ve only ever been to one on top drop, and it was so horribly done that we’re still talking about it years later. Even googling when I was brushing up on my research for this fic didn’t give me much.

Anyways, it’s good that Jopson works for Crozier, who treats drop as something that can happen to anyone regardless of position. In turn, this means Jopson is able to recognize it happening to Ned, and will just merrily bulldoze and/or gently bully Ned until he gets the information he needs to be able to help.

 **RACK and SSC:** Ah, look, it’s the author picking a pedantic fight in the middle of their fic using their POV character as a mouthpiece. SO. When I was first getting into kink in the early two thousands, SSC (Safe, Sane, Consensual) was the name of the game. It essentially means that the activities you do under the BDSM umbrella should fit all three of those criteria.

The issue that I and many others have with the acronym is that it doesn’t particularly fit that well for a lot of the activities in BDSM. After all, what’s really safe? You can trip walking down the same stairs that you’ve walked down every day of your life if your shoelace is loose, or if your ankle goes weird, or if you’re just not paying attention. What’s sane? No, really, what is it? What defines sane? Should we be using mental health terms to determine whether or not something is a good idea? What’s the opposite of 'sane’ in this context?

(I’m not gonna bicker about consensual, obviously, that one I still hold to.)

How do you practice edge play under SSC? Can you safely punch someone? Is it sane to do so? (God, I hate the inclusion of 'sane’ in the acronym _so much_.) Can you consent to something that doesn’t fit the first two criteria? If you decide an activity fits all three criteria, does that guarantee nobody gets hurt? (Absolutely not.)

So, there’s a shift in the scene to use RACK instead–Risk Aware Consensual Kink. RACK is more focused on assessing the risks to specific activities, and consenting to do those activities even though the risk exists. You can definitely punch someone under RACK–because RACK supposes that you’ve discussed the risks of punching them, you’re both doing your best to manage those risks, and you’ve both consented to the activity while recognizing that it’s inherently risky to do it and you’ve taken as many precautions as you can.

Sir John 'actually the expedition is outfitted for seven years and we don’t need any rescue’ Franklin is clearly focused on SSC, with an emphasis on no further risk assessments once a particular activity is deemed to be safe. This isn’t to say that everyone who practices SSC ignores possible risks–but it is to say that the acronym doesn’t encourage active risk assessment the same way that RACK does. (Doing X is safe, therefore, I don’t think about the risks while I do X, because it’s safe.) I personally think that RACK is a more robust way to assess kink activities, but, as you can probably infer from, you know, the entirety of this fic, I take part in a lot of activities that don’t fit under SSC, so I’m biased.

I do not blame Edward one bit for getting into that argument with Sir John. I do feel pretty certain that Blanky surreptitiously filmed it, though, so that he can send it to Francis. I also am pretty sure that Francis’ own stance on RACK, which comes through pretty clearly in his books, would have informed Edward’s stance as well, so, you know, full circle there. (Do you have any idea how many people you’ve informally mentored via your books, Francis? It’s *cough*JamesFitzjamesAlso*cough* a lot.)

 **Florentine Flogging:** Here’s the reference video I was using for Florentine flogging! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGCQGsxbwtw](https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGCQGsxbwtw)

Sharp eyes will notice that this is a very similar skillset to spinning poi, which I thought was really neat.

**Line Notes:**

> Jopson will be back in six months to give his talk, and Edward is going to be right there in the front row to support him, and that means that nothing can go wrong this weekend.

It…doesn’t actually mean that. I mean, obviously, yes, not being banned from Canada is a requirement. But not having the booth open wouldn’t have killed anybody.

> _Irving dragged you home—please advise how, he’s half your size?_

This is funnier once I did some googling and realized that Ronan Raftery is six goddamn feet tall, which makes him two inches taller than Matthew McNulty, but I decided to let Edward’s inaccuracies stand because they’re pretty goddamn funny. Also, I maintain that Irving gives off smol energy.

> “Oh, good,” Irving says, the tension instantly melting off his face. “I’m so glad he made it to bed.”

Tozer did not make it to bed, but, tbh, I wouldn’t correct Irving at this particular moment either. Especially not in front of Lady Jane Franklin.

> “Who’s this, then?” Lady Franklin asks. She’s wearing a vintage dress from a decade Edward should probably recognize, but doesn’t. (Jopson would, he’s sure of it.)

The 1950s, Edward. It’s literally the most easily recognizable decade.

> “…he’s fine,” Edward says, more confused than ever.

Edward, Edward, Edward. Both more confused than ever–and completely unwilling to do any followup on this whatsoever, because why ask questions when instead you could eyefuck Jopson. (In a sense, though, this is Tozer’s problem, so Edward’s ability to disconnect from it completely is probably an improvement from, say, Edward of a few years ago.) Normally, leaving plot threads hanging like this would bother me extensively, but because I’m drafting the Tozer/Irving fic as we speak, I’m comfortable just letting all of this just hang for a bit. These plot threads are important to include because they happened, but they’re not important to resolve, because Edward doesn’t give a shit.

> Nothing fancy—just Ned, with a little handwritten squiggle next to it that’s almost a heart, if you squint.

It’s definitely a heart. Jopson just channeled the patented Francis Crozier technique of 'if I make a vague line here, people can interpret it how they want’. Not very characteristic of Jopson–but, as we discussed last week, poor boy is carting around some baggage re: his affection, so we’ll just let him have this.

> It’s probably the goddamn bruise from yesterday’s fuckup. Well, that, and the fact that Tozer isn’t there. Or maybe Edward’s just fucking up something else that he’s completely unaware of.

I’d like to propose option four, which is that Edward is hot as fuck, dressed in leather, and was part of a scene that gathered a respectfully distant crowd in the dungeon the night previous. Edward is not aware that option four is an option, but I would like to reassure him that option four is, in fact, an option.

> “What do you do for aftercare?” Jopson asks curiously. “Like—what did you do last night, after you walked me home?”

Bold of Jopson to assume that Edward spent two seconds looking after himself. (He won’t make that mistake again–Edward’s blog entry on aftercare was detailed enough that last-night!Jopson made the endorphin-blurred call that Edward had his own routine sorted, and is now finding out that Edward has no such thing.)

> Edward sighs, starts to mentally assemble an apology. He’s done it again—let his guard down, said too much. The apology has never worked in the past. But he’ll have to try. There’s always a chance Edward will get it right this time, even though he’s not remotely ready for this (it was going so well), but he has to, he has to start, he’ll just—he’ll start by—saying—

In true Ed Little fashion, Edward is assuming that the reason this conversation has never gone well in the past is because of _him_ , instead of the more rational suggestion that perhaps he’s just trying to hook up with people who aren’t actually compatible with him.

> Jopson’s face is very pink. “Quite the mental image,” he says. He swallows, visibly. “You and Tozer were, uh. Both holding back during the demo yesterday, then.”

Ah, yes, the look and sound of a man who is rather quickly realizing that a wank fantasy he’d watched unfold in real time yesterday was actually just the tip of the iceberg.

> Jopson’s eyebrows shoot up. “Why?” He scrunches his nose, frowns. “Was that meant to be a joke?”

Can’t get all sad about Edward’s past of attempting to have relationships with people he wasn’t compatible with until we also get sad about Jopson’s history, which apparently includes men he thought were tapping into his fantasies, only to find out that they were kidding. Ouch, my heart.

> “Only if you want,” Jopson adds. “We could also, um. Go for a run?”

I don’t believe that Jopson has ever gone for a run in his entire life. I appreciate that he’s trying to help, though. That’s very kind of him.

> Jopson turns. “Hi, yes.”

Jopson cannot let a customer go unserviced, and I, for one, admire his dedication to looking after other people’s booths as well as his own. I also think, although this action here is entirely instinctual, it’s also a good checkpoint–had Edward reacted poorly to Jopson stepping in, well, that might not have been awesome. As it is, Edward is grateful, so he just keeps landing in Jopson’s long-term prospect box.

> “You know that huge guy they have on security?”

It’s Tuunbaq! Also, Tozer should cool it on the whole “he doesn’t speak English” thing, because it’s not like Tozer speaks Inuktitut. (And while we’re talking about Tozer, yes, he is wearing the equivalent of his mutineer hoodie.)

> “And I’m like, yeah, I know him, I was drinking with him last night. And they just look at me. And they look at each other. And then the doctor guy is like ‘we had some concerning reports about his behaviour’, but I don’t know who would have said anything, the only other person there was Irving. Fuck, man, I was answering questions for an hour.”

Tozer, look, buddy. You can have a pass because you’re as hungover as shit and I’m sure you’ve been contemplating death since you woke up, but you answered your own question there. The only other person there was Irving.

_The only other person there was Irving._

One would hope that this might, you know, cause you to rethink your association with Hickey, considering that someone else’s assessment of his behaviour has resulted in all of this, but I guess we’ll have to chill on that for now until we get some Tozer POV.

> Edward frowns. “He doesn’t drink?”

Pulled this bit directly from canon, and because I also think it’s a fascinating bit of character development. Adam Nagaitis had such insights into his character in the AMC interview ([https://www.amc.com/shows/the-terror/talk/2018/04/the-terror-qa-adam-nagaitis-cornelius-hickey](https://href.li/?https://www.amc.com/shows/the-terror/talk/2018/04/the-terror-qa-adam-nagaitis-cornelius-hickey)) and I really think it’s interesting working with that in a modern AU as well. So–this version of Hickey doesn’t drink either. I think it’s also interesting in how Edward and Tozer deal with this–Edward has known Hickey for years, and never noticed. Tozer knows–and still gets shitfaced anyways, even though he’s drinking alone.

> Tozer’s eyes go distant. “It’s the weirdest thing,” he says after a moment. “I think I told Irving about Heather.”

We can assume, for better or for worse, that Tozer’s memory of last night is a bit spotty. I am sorry, though, that this is one of the things Tozer remembers. It’s further away in kink!AU than it was in canon, but I don’t imagine Heather’s death was any easier for Tozer here than it was canonically.

(Also, the choreo of Tozer physically shifting Edward’s hand off his arm was a late addition, and I hurt my own feelings adding it.)

> Tozer raises his eyebrows, and then winces, goes back to squinting. “Hanky code,” he lectures. “Black is for S&M. Your proclivities aside, I don’t figure you meant to flag sub. And stuff it if you tell me it’s a fashion choice, I ain’t got headspace for that bullshit today.” He glances upward. “I swear they turned the fucking lights up in here, Jesus. I’ll see you after, I gotta go.”

Edward, you absolute himbo of a man. Jopson has been trying so hard, and I’m sure that you have a blog entry about hanky code buried somewhere back in your archive, but you also buried the information in your head, and thus did not access it, and all of Jopson’s efforts were wasted.

> “No, you misunderstand me,” Edward says. “I love that. Christ, the fuck did he finally do?”

Edward, Edward, Edward. Jopson has the right of it with his missing stair comment–but you’re just as complicit as Tozer is in this, because by saying nothing and waiting for the problem to go away, you’ve been rubber-stamping Hickey’s behaviour. I feel as though there’s going to be Discussions about this in London.

> “Honestly, Thomas, after all we’ve been through.” Sophia sighs, and then turns to face the table, braces her hands on the edge of it. “You know you can still call me Sophy.”

One of the things that really sucks about breakups is the part where there are ripples out into the rest of your social circle as well. I have the feeling that Jopson and Sophia might have gotten along really well–but Jopson’s loyalties are with Francis, and so he’s been pulling back since the most recent breakup in an effort to, you know, not hurt Francis any more than Francis is already hurt. I think it’s significant that Edward is allowed to see this interaction, to be honest–because this is insight into who Jopson is as a person when he’s not working _or_ submitting.

> Ross has a firm handshake, and a bright smile. He’s dressed casually—jeans, and a tshirt—and Edward feels horribly, awfully _over_ dressed.

Edward is not appreciating casualdom!JCR nearly as much as I would like him to, and this is really, really upsetting me, because I would like to appreciate casualdom!JCR a lot.

I also really, really appreciated the opportunity to include some platonic kink here, because platonic kink is really important to me too. Sometimes you’re just in it for the experience, you know? And there’s no additional emotional or sexual connection there.

> “Some kind of a multi-tailed flogger,” Edward says. “Little polished leather cord knots on the ends? Punches like a son of a—er, it’s a fairly sharp sting.”

Look, I wanted to include a reference picture for this. I did some googling. I like this style of flogger. But in the course of my googling, I found out that Walmart sells a twenty four dollar version of this in the states (I’ve since been informed it’s a third party seller BUT IT THREW ME OKAY), and I’m too Canadian to handle this, I can barely even handle American Walmarts selling alcohol, okay? So there’s just. There’s just no pictures. Anyways, good ball end floggers start at about two hundred Canadian, and they punch pretty fucking hard.

> Good, Edward thinks. “So, the shower. I went up to the hotel room, figuring, ah. You know. Strip naked, step under the water, all that. And that’s what you should imagine, because I opened the door to our room, and…well, yeah. I’m here.”

Edward is going to need to update his dirty talk game, because this is Not Great, buddy. It’s Not Great. And, let’s be honest here. I’m sure you have years and years of filthy stories. You’re going to need to learn how to tell them, because Jopson will appreciate and value every single one.


	5. Aftercare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [“Where’m I s’posed to stay then, huh? Alright, yeah, I can...sure. Except, what if I can only get one of them upscale ones? And what if...yeah, okay. That does help. I mean, unless—alright, Ed, sure. Yeah. You owe me a favour, though.” Or, the one where Edward really had no idea how much an AirBnB cost, and Tozer came out of that conversation much richer than he anticipated.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/57597151#workskin)
> 
> \---
> 
> Commentary for chapter five of Closer.

[Chapter five of _Closer_ , the first installment in _Somewhere in Canada (the Terror kink AU)…_ is up!](https://href.li/?https://archiveofourown.org/works/23457298/chapters/57597151) And with that–this installment is finished, and I’m all up in my feelings about it. (My various inboxes are always open in case you would like to be all up in your feelings in my direction.)

For the last time–technical notes first, story notes after, line notes to finish it all up.

Alright, here we go.

**Technical Considerations:**

**Timing:** So I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to cover for the rest of the weekend. We’re at Sunday afternoon now, and the conference is coming to a close. There’s some stuff that happens in the afternoon while they’re packing up, there’s some stuff that happens at the airport, but it gets to a point where plot is just, like, events that are happening on the page, you know? The actual story is the resolution of the arcs, and Edward and Jopson can resolve their arcs perfectly fine by going to their hotel room and fucking it out. I suspect we’ll get bits and pieces of the missing bits–packing up the booths, actually getting onto the plane, and all that kind of thing–through the Tozer/Irving story anyways, since I don’t think Tozer’s arc is properly resolved until he makes it back to London.

(One could argue (correctly, I think) that the actual resolution of their arcs was probably the ability to successfully navigate through the aftermath of the dungeon scene, having the Ross scene go well, and generally the way that Edward and Jopson have tightened their orbit around each other over the course of the weekend, but it’s nice to formalize that a bit, I think, by letting them fuck and have some casual non-sex time together just to verify that, yes, it isn’t just about the sex or the BDSM, they are having a nice time together hanging out otherwise as well.)

 **POV Structure:** Please forgive me my extra Jopson POV at the end, I needed it so that we could have one more chance at appreciating Edward’s muttonchops, piercings, tattoo, and sweatpants dick, because Edward himself spends zero time thinking about any of these things, and they’re all such very good things.

 **The Full Monty:** So this is the first chapter in which they’re both completely naked. Edward is fairly casual about his own nudity, so it wasn’t really a thing for him–after all, Jopson has already seen his dick, and as Edward would be the first to tell you, the metal is about as exciting as it gets. (Jopson would argue that, I think.) The nudity wasn’t really a thing for Jopson either–his body is his body–but Edward’s reaction to his body is important. When I’m deciding whose POV certain events happen in, I try to select the POV where there’s more feelings happening. So that meant that Jopson was getting naked in his own POV, which gives us that whole entire face journey Edward goes on, the brief distraction of poking Jopson’s bruises, and then the rest of the clothing removal, bracketed with the visual of Edward standing there with his visible hardon and his hands behind his head. Technically, the “I’m not scared” dialogue is more important to Edward–Jopson just happens into the right words there–but since we already know that’s a big deal for Ned from his prior POV, we can stay in Jopson’s head for that here.

**Story Considerations:**

**Comfort Reading:** I’m pretty sure that Edward has read _Foundation_ approximately nine million times. I also think this is the second or third copy of the book that he’s on, because he keeps reading them to pieces. But I think that having a familiar book that he can just sink into instead of stressing about the whole entire ~~~convention experience~~~ is probably integral to him being a “reasonable human being” and not a “grumpy bastard” (thanks for that analysis, Tozer). I didn’t think too hard about this–I just thought about Edward Little for point five seconds, and what kind of books he probably liked, and I thought about the Discovery Service, and science fiction, and then went–yeah, Asimov has the right blend of classic literature and hard science, and Autumn backed me up on it, so here we are. (I also should mention, because I saw some discussion of it on twitter and went _wow I don’t remember that_ that I was, um. Maybe fourteen the last time I read _Foundation_? So I think this is really a comfort read for Edward in that he’s been reading and rereading it since about that age as well.)

(As an addendum, I feel like Edward probably has a carefully curated book collection back at his flat of books that are nice and new and pristine and I feel like he probably keeps his battered Asimovs, like, under his bed or something where nobody can see them. (As if he has visitors, lol.) Jopson, on the other hand, probably has a place on his desk for five or six books, because the bookshelf is being used for storage of other stuff, and the desk books are constantly rotating as he swaps paperbacks back and forth with his family.)

 **Edward’s Hands:** I do feel there’s a very good chance Edward isn’t going to be doing up any buttons. I also feel as though just getting his sweatpants on involved some profanity. The thing about masochism, though, is that when you’re presented with a new sensation, such as going into a scene bare-handed instead of wearing gloves like you regularly do, often times the new sensation feels good even if it hurts, sooooo you keep doing it, and in Edward’s case, he has that extra pressure of Trying Really Hard To Impress Jopson, so, yeah. He’s gonna need some time to recover from that physically, and he won’t be punching anything for a bit here.

 **Scene Planning:** So the thing that I really love here, that’s really not obvious unless you squint and look at the scene sideways, is that Edward had everything perfectly planned out when they were in the dungeon. He scouted out the area in advance. He had a chair handy to put Jopson’s clothes on. He talked to the DMs in advance. And then everything went according to plan.

But you put the same man into a hotel room for fucking? He can’t remember if he has lube or condoms. His sex bag is nowhere near the vicinity of the place they’re having sex. (They don’t even make it to the bed initially–Edward is eating ass on the floor, for fuck’s sake.) When they finally get onto the bed with the sex bag, the contents end up scattered across the bed, and Edward still needs to get off the bed in order to retrieve the cock ring.

In short, give a man a dungeon and a scene to plan, and everything goes perfectly. Offer to fuck a man, and all planning immediately goes out the window. I mean, they had great sex. But Edward, sweetheart.

(And if we’re talking about interpretations that happen when you squint? It’s entirely likely that Edward doesn’t actually have a whole lot of sex, usually, and that would definitely explain why he’s much smoother on the mats than he is in the bedroom.)

 **The Second Collar:** So, the second collar, rather deliberately on Edward’s part, did not make an appearance. The first collar, the heavier one, is the type of collar that’s used for play. It can be worn in regular kink spaces as well, but it’s heavy, and a little bulky. And it’s obvious that Jopson is taking comfort from it–he’s reluctant to let go of it once he’s taken it off to get into the shower with Edward, and it keeps showing back up again on his neck even though it’s removed a couple of times throughout the course of the evening/night. The second collar, the fancier one that won’t hold up to any kind of play, will be a lot more comfortable for Jopson to wear on a regular basis, but Jopson doesn’t know that it exists, and Edward doesn’t offer.

It’s Significant that Edward is hanging on to that second collar, and if I was going to hazard a guess, I’d guess that Edward is working on a plan to make a formal gift of it at some point in the future. Formally giving someone a collar (as opposed to a collar that’s just being used for play) usually signifies an arrangement between the people involved. Kind of like, you know, formally declaring yourselves partners, or whatever it is people do these days.

(As an aside–it could be considered rude that Jopson keeps putting the collar back on when they haven’t discussed a formal arrangement outside of play, but Edward clearly doesn’t see it that way, so there’s no reason for it to come up. It’s always better to ask for clarification re: collars, because sometimes there’s a lot of symbolism involved with them, but sometimes a collar is just a collar.)

**Line Notes:**

> “Would have been faster if you hadn’t kissed me in the car park,” Edward grumbles.

Trust Edward to find a way to be grumpy about makeouts. (To be fair, I think Edward was very pleased about the makeouts, and grumpy about subsequently having to adjust his dick in the car park just to be even moderately comfortable for the rest of the packing up.)

> “Got something for you, if you want it,” Edward says.

I really like deep POV, because we know damn well from Edward’s POV that he’s been considering how to word this for hours and regrets this particular combination of words the moment it comes out of his mouth, but since we’re in Jopson’s head, Edward just looks like a "proper" alpha dominant, and it’s hilarious.

> He wants to kneel right here, get Edward’s trousers undone, open his—

Tom Jopson has a marked lack of aversion to public sex, and everyone should keep this in mind for *checks watch* six months from now in-universe, when they’re back for the winter convention.

> “Left my dicks back in London,” Thomas says, deadpan. He’s looking at Edward when he says it, trying to gauge the look on his face.

And if we squint and tilt our head sideways, this is another hint at ways in which relationships have gone wrong for Tom Jopson, and it’s that same false dominant-sadist-top / submissive-masochist-bottom dichotomy we were talking about last week with poor Nedward. It’s also an indication that Jopson hadn’t really planned on hooking up with anybody this weekend at all–he came with his business hat on, ready to sell all of Francis’ books, and bootblack for charity, and then, you know, work himself into exhaustion and not do anything other than casually flirt with–whoa, now, who’s the pierced guy?

> “That’s right,” Edward says softly. “You can handle this. You can handle what I’m doing to you. What I’m going to do to you.”

There it is–the resolution of that internalized kinkshaming that Edward was fighting with on Friday, in that it’s no longer something Edward is questioning. He knows that Tom is good for it.

One of the really interesting things about the way this fic worked out is that the entire fic could have gone really differently if Hickey had applied himself to his shitdisturbing in the opposite order of the order that he chose–after he derailed Edward’s panel, Hickey basically stepped back to let Edward self-destruct, and focused back in on Tozer, which left a huge open space for Jopson to step right into, and lo, the joplittle happened. If Hickey had stayed focused on Edward, he could have fucked Edward’s entire weekend up, and neither the joplittle nor the solving* would have happened.

*Trust me on this, I swear it’s related, and we’ll get to it in the Tozer/Irving fic.

> Jopson’s accent has shifted. It’s rougher, now. He wonders if this is how Jopson sounds at home, if this is how Jopson sounds with his family, if this is how—

There it is! The real accent, underneath the one that he taught himself! It’s there! And he’s letting Edward hear it!

> “Face to face,” Jopson says quietly. This time, his eyes don’t shift away from Edward’s, and Edward loves him for it. “I know it’s not very, uh—”

JUST ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT, TOM, please, you’re hurting all three of my feelings here.

> “You’ll have plenty of time to look,” Edward warns as he gets back onto the bed, hard cock swaying as he moves. “Takes me a bit to get a condom on over all this.”

I learned this while I was researching cock piercings. I don’t know as I would actually want to learn how to get a condom on over all that, it seems like it’s finicky and takes a long time. But, that being said, I’m not convinced they’re going to stick with condoms for all that long either, Jopson is clearly ready to pretend he’s never heard of them.

> Edward shuts his eyes, strokes his cock. Reaches between his legs, tugs on the ring in his guiche piercing, pleasure curling up his spine. “Won’t be much of a show,” he manages.

Edward’s not kidding about this–one of the downsides to a Prince Albert is that apparently it generally removes the ability to come with any sort of velocity, and everything just sort of…oozes out. We don’t really directly see that here, because Edward’s thinking about something else while he’s coming, but it’s implied in the next bit when Jopson is dragging Edward’s come from his stomach up to his chest, ie, it didn’t get there on its own, but Jopson is creating the aesthetic that he wants to see, so good for him.

> “Might have marked you a bit, there,” he admits.

Jopson’s fine by the time the poutine shows up, no worries. Edward slapped him pretty hard, but Jopson doesn’t mark easily, so the redness on his cheek will fade.

> “I’ll pinch if I have to,” Jopson says dryly. He glances into the shower. “…you’re not just using the hotel toiletries, are you?”

Edward was not, in fact, using the hotel toiletries, but he definitely is now. The jury is out as to whether Tozer took them on purpose or by accident, and, to be honest, I don’t know which way the cookie is gonna crumble on that one! It’ll be an adventure of discovery.

> Eating and looking at him at the same time, with absolutely no care as to how he looks.

It’s a love letter to the eating-out-of-a-can scene, yes, thank you for noticing.

> “Oh thank god,” Edward says. He relaxes into Jopson’s lap, turns his head and nuzzles Jopson’s bare stomach. “I’d hate to think I’d made an ass out of myself for nothing.”

Only in Edward Little’s head would ‘confessing your deepest feelings to someone who clearly wanted to hear the confession’ be translated as 'making an ass out of yourself’. There’s a lot of things to be said in there about previous relationships, but ugh, I don’t want to say any of them, they’re not nice.

(Also, as an aside, Jopson didn’t say it back–but, then, he didn’t need to. The important bit is that Edward said it when he felt like he needed to, and Jopson will say it when he feels like he needs to, and they’re going to be very happy together.)

> “And let us not forget that you also stole the hotel key out of my trouser pocket in order to let yourself quietly back into the room, in order to…”

Jopson is a snoop and a thief and Edward wouldn’t have him any other way. I think, in a lot of ways, Edward is used to people being too intimidated by him to play…and Jopson has made it quite clear, in this way and many other ways, that he’s not scared, and that he’s having a fun time, and he’s carving out his own enjoyment, and that’s really important.

And, uh. That’s it, that’s the fic!

I think this is the softest thing I’ve ever written with the hardest kink in it, haha. I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out, though–I love kink conventions, I love BDSM, and I’m really passionate about the opportunities for valuable, committed relationships that don’t follow the “standard” definition of what a relationship is and what it looks like. I think the thing Edward and Tom are carving out for themselves is intense, and more than a little weird, but I also think it’s exactly what both of them want, and when it gets right down to it, that’s the important thing. So there you have it.

I’m going to be drafting the Tozer/Irving fic next, since it chronologically overlaps with _Closer_ , and then I’m going to draft the Fitzier, which takes place at the winter conference (ie, six in-universe months from _Closer_ ). Unfortunately, since I want to release them in the opposite order (Fitzier first, Solving second), there’s probably going to be a bit of dead air for a while here.

The good news, though, is that Little and Jopson are living their best lives and don’t have any major plot-related incidents over the next six months, so I’m free to release little one-shots of the various things they’re up to while I’m drafting more longfics.

If you have any questions or anything, or you just wanna yell at me, I’m around! My inboxes are open! I spend more time on Twitter than I do on anything else, but I check my tumblr a couple times a day too.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. _Closer_ (and the kink verse in general) are very near and dear to my heart, and I’m so happy that it’s been warmly received.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all the commentary that I have for this installment! It's fascinating to dig through this again--I did this commentary a year ago, and my perspectives on things have shifted some, but it's really delightful to see that I haven't penned myself into any corners, I've only expanded my own understanding.
> 
> Anyways, I'm still drafting the Fitzier kink au which takes place six months after this, but I'm getting close to being done, and I, for one, am excited to share it.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at [heyk2ula](https://twitter.com/heyk2ula) for fic promo, at [heyktula (locked)](https://twitter.com/heyktula) for general blatherings, or on [tumblr](https://heyktula.tumblr.com/), which is generally flurries of content followed by tumbleweeds.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm pleased to answer any further questions, if you have any.


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